Palin defends McCain against Arizona GOP censure

Sarah Palin is inserting herself into the latest Republican Party infighting.

The former vice presidential candidate weighed in on the Arizona Republican Party’s recent censure of Sen. John McCain, and lent her support to her one-time running mate.

“It goes without saying we don’t all agree on all political issues,” Palin wrote on her Facebook page Monday evening. “It’s perplexing to see Senator McCain’s good efforts to uncover the Obama agenda being ignored and perhaps even hindered now by those wanting to censure the Arizona Senator. Despite our differences on some issues, there is no questioning Senator McCain’s dedication to national security in spite of the White House agenda.”

Calling McCain “an American hero and a friend,” Palin praised the Arizona senator for his courage during the Vietnam War, and defended his aggressive stance against President Obama when it came to issues such as the economy and Benghazi.

“Because of his persistence we WILL get that truth, and then more eyes will be open to see how dangerous an Obama-led retreating America is in this volatile world,” Palin wrote.

Palin’s remarks are a departure from her usual perspective: following the end of the McCain-Palin presidential campaign, Palin has aligned herself with the far-right movement that often criticized “establishment” Republicans such as McCain, even publicly rebuking him in recent interviews. “If the GOP machine continues to try to marginalize that tea party patriot, who is doing all the hard work to get Republicans re-elected, then the establishment will go the way of the Whigs,” Palin told Laura Ingraham last November.

The two’s fractured relationship was also documented in the 2010 book Game Change, by journalists John Heilemann and Mark Halperin, which later became an award-winning HBO film.

The Arizona GOP passed a resolution on Saturday criticizing McCain for being too liberal. On msnbc Monday night, Arizona District 30 Republican chairman Timothy Schwartz told Chris Matthews that the Arizona GOP had no problem with bipartisanship, but they feel that McCain is “always working on the other side of the aisle and he never lands on our side of the aisle.”

Schwartz added, “All the bills [McCain] has signed on to draft or to co-sponsor is always with Democrats…We don’t need somebody to play for the other team. We need somebody to fight for our team.”